


Earth, Wind and a Handful of Stone

by karrenia_rune



Category: Gargoyles (TV)
Genre: Gen, Yuletide New Year's Resolutions Challenge
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-01
Updated: 2015-01-01
Packaged: 2018-03-04 18:40:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,212
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3081827
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/karrenia_rune/pseuds/karrenia_rune
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>How Owen managed to accquire the Cauldron of Plenty for his employer, David Xanatos who plans to use it to gain immortality,<br/>set just prior to the events in episode "The Price.":</p>
            </blockquote>





	Earth, Wind and a Handful of Stone

**Author's Note:**

  * For [radiophile](https://archiveofourown.org/users/radiophile/gifts).



Disclaimer: Gargoyles belongs to Disney and Buena Vista Television. It is not mine.

"Earth, Wind, and a Handful of Stone" by Karrenia

On the rare occasions when he looked into a mirror or another type of reflecting surface was to regard the cut of his suit or the lie of his designer silk cravat or tie as at lay against his collarbone. Owen Burnett was nothing if not immaculate and impeccable in dress and demeanor. 

He had to be, for, after all, that was he had designed the man to be, and somewhere along the way, perhaps without his even being aware of it the transition from improvisation and back again had become more than just another extension of his mercurial, quixotic, and volatile nature. 

Slipping into and out of his ‘borrowed’ second skin, had become as simple as a matter of thought, like borrowing an extra suit of clothes. He still knew where to draw the demarcation between who he was when he was Puck and when he became Owen, but it was still a demarcation.

Of course, even if his employer knew, and he suspected that David Xanatos did in point of fact know; more than likely it even appealed to his devil-may-care ego to have such a being in his employ, which is why he more than likely had not stressed too heavily for details after the successful completion of his mission to retrieve the Cauldron of Plenty. 

In the back of his mind, Puck did wonder what the man wanted with it. The thing was one of the legendary Treasures of the Tuatha De’ Danna, or the Sidhe or the Third Reason and had been instrumental in quelling and or defeating many a conflict back in the day, but there were very few left who remembered that those conflicts and its participants were real and not just legend or artifacts. He remembered, of course, so did his former master, but the less said about that, the better as far as Puck was concerned. 

 

If the big guy wanted his spear, or the cauldron he showed have kept better track of his stuff. Owen shoved the meandering thoughts to a back corner of his mind, a place he relegated for such things, and covered his momentary lapse by using one hand to adjust the fit of his glasses, wondering if his tour guide had noticed the slip.  
He hadn’t.

The curator was a bubbly young thing that probably could not have been much out of grad school but nevertheless, the man did show him over to the Irish and Celtic wing of the museum without too much persuasion on Owen’s part. If he had known it would be this easy he might not have bothered with the mild cloaking spell that he’d spread like a net over the guards.

 

Somehow Owen had thought the aforementioned artifact would be both larger and more impressive than it was, but the sense of having his notions about it was quickly suppressed because he could feel like a buzzing at the nape of his neck that emanated from the thing.

“Sir, will there be anything else?” Normally we wouldn’t allow private viewings of our collections, especially one on loan from Washington D.C, but your arguments were most persuasive.”

“No, no, that’s quite all right.”

“Are there any questions?” This is just one piece of the Four Treasures. Carbon-dating puts at least over three thousand years old, probably from the time prior to the coming of the Milesians to the Emerald Isle.”

Owen darted a glance at the young man,” Thank you. I wouldn’t want to keep you from your duties.”

The young man whose name Owen had never quite registered appeared rather crestfallen that he could not carry on with his spiel, but walked away toward another wing. It was that he minded having an audience, it just wouldn’t do to have one when the Cauldron vanished under ‘mysterious circumstances.’

Dealing with the security was easy, he’d seen and learned the intricate ins and outs of Xanatos’ Enterprises Inc. and compared to that this was relatively straight-forward.

There was the small matter of working several spells at once or rather maintain the one that kept the guards and the security cameras blind to his activities, but as the Puck, he had more than enough power to accomplish both tasks.

The Cauldron was still putting that teeth-grating throbbing pulse of energy but not so much that even as Owen couldn’t take it; it was just irritating. 

Picking it up by the handles he covered it with a burlap tarp that he’d brought along for that purpose and then walked out the way he’d come. No sense in having to cast another spell so soon on the heels of the previous ones.

“This was almost too easy,” he muttered as he vanished into the ether with his new acquisition firmly in hand. “

Present day

He’d delivered both the artifact and his report with the same succinct economy with which he did everything in his Owen persona

David Xanatos had nodded and uttered a terse, “Well done, Owen.” And then he’d been dismissed to carry on with his other tasks. 

A day later he’d been summoned to report to one of the lower levels of the Eyrie Building where he found his employer standing over the filling almost to the brim boiling cauldron a look of anticipatory and predatory glee on his mobile features.

“What?” he asked.

“I found a spell in the Grimoire that shows how to use the Cauldron of Plenty to grant immortality.”

Owen adjusted the fit of his glasses, even as one eyebrow arched up at a distinct upwards slant, then regarded his employer, saying, “I strongly urge you, Sir, to reconsider this course of action.” 

“You disapprove, Owen?” said Xanatos.

“In a manner of speaking, We still do not understand the full properties of the artifact, and I would suggest carefully studying the aforementioned spell before diving head first in. There could be dire consequences.”

“Pfah, on your dire consequences!” Xanatos exclaimed. “

“Sir, there’s bravado and then there’s hubris, and the reckoning of such things is a fire delicate science.”

“You’re worried that something will go wrong?” the other man replied, this time with much more thought and gravity behind the words.

“Yes, replied Owen.

“We’ll proceed, then, but with caution.”

He took out the Grimoire and began directing Owen to add the ingredients into the mixture which he had put by on a low folding table to his left, stirring periodically as the book indicated.

“That should do it,” he said. “Wait a minute, I think we’re missing one key ingredient.”

 

“Indeed,” said Owen, “Which is?”

“The skin of a gargoyle, but it can’t just be cast off shedding, it has to been a whole, living breathing gargoyle.”

Owen sighed, “I imagine that you now believe that we should test that theory. I can’t imagine that our ‘guests’ would volunteer for such an undertaking.”

“No, I imagine not.”

“We’ll have to trick them into doing it, then. It might be our only option, that or capture one of them. Hmm, I’ll have to think some more about how best to accomplish that. Good night, Owen.”

“Good night, Mr. Xanatos.


End file.
